Page 6 of Love at First Sighting

El

Peace. Finally.

I shut my eyes as the elevator door closes, and I hit every single floor along the way, keeping the door clamped shut at each one.

I ride for several minutes before finally stepping out at my floor.

I look both ways. The paparazzi are impatient by nature, giving up on me in favor of easier prey.

I should know better than to tag any location I’m at, but my Pilates instructor took the photo, and not sharing it would have felt rude.

I need any boosts to my reputation I can take these days.

It’s only been a day since the incident, and I’ve dropped a hundred thousand followers and been tagged in forty-eight posts breaking down my “freakout,” and several online outlets have swooped up my story.

I’ve been dragged through the mud because I’m a woman who dared to speak out, and I usually shake it off fine.

But the number of times I’ve been called crazy has me feeling like maybe I am.

There have been countless theories and words said about me over the past twenty-four hours, but not one of them has been “Are you okay?” or “I believe you.”

Well, of course, in my masses of followers, I do still have some supporters, but @momofcaydenjade43 in Indiana isn’t going to make that much difference in how safe and sane I feel. There is no one in my immediate real life who cares.

Worst of all, my mother, the one person who is programmed to love me, has been giving statements to the press, noting I’ve always “had a flare for the dramatic.” Wannabe magician wonder Alaka-Sam shared a repost of my video with a Praying for El as I Wait Backstage for Tonight’s Show—Tix Still Available!

caption, with a link to buy tickets to his magic show.

Bex, meanwhile, continues to share “Keep Calm and Carry On” graphics she finds on Pinterest and clips of Winston Churchill’s speeches from World War II.

The internet serves as a full judge, jury, and executioner, and my sentence is clear: I’m either crazy and canceled or an attention whore and canceled. There are a couple of outliers who think I’m participating in some new alternate-reality game and are eagerly waiting for the next episode.

I wish this were a game.

I decide it’s time to face the music. The silence is nice. There’s no one yelling my name, no one demanding anything from me. No Bex shouting through my door to ask if I’m still off my rocker.

I’m within feet of my car when I sense I might not be alone. I feel eyes tracking me, and panic surges up my spine. The paparazzi can’t keep quiet like this. They can hardly take two steps without flashing a camera or falling out of a bush.

I stop and look around, but don’t see or hear anything —just the flickering fluorescents above me and the rush of cars on the street. I’m the only one parked on this level. Shit. I steady my breathing and prepare to finish my trek to the car.

“ARIEL MARTIN!” a male voice shouts. It’s panicked, desperate, and there’s a crack at the end of my name. It echoes and reverberates, but there’s only one of him. No gaggle of paparazzi in tow. “EL!”

I don’t turn around to give my follower the time of day, just scurry to my car and my tinted windows.

“I’m not her!” I say back. “Bye!”

“No, no, no! El! I just need a minute of your time!”

I groan, and, of course, this is the moment when my auto-unlock key fob refuses to sync and allow me a speedy getaway. I scramble through my purse to find it, but the man’s footsteps are getting closer and he’s picked up speed. There are still no camera flashes, though.

Maybe I got the world’s most persistent time-share salesman.

Finally, I grab my keys and unlock the door.

“Hey! Don’t go! Please?”

Please? Oh dear.

As I open the door, he sneaks around the front of the car to reach me. I fling the door wide open, and it collides hard with his body. He lets out a sad moan and a humiliated “ow” as he hits the ground and reaches for the hat I’ve knocked off his head.

“Please, please, please don’t leave yet. I need to talk to you! It’s important!”

I look down at my pursuer for the first time. As he climbs back to his feet, I notice he’s wearing a black suit, with the jacket hanging open to reveal a crisp white button-down, a tie, and…a pair of suspenders? Does he think this is 1950? His face is shielded by shadows and a black fedora.

Is…this the Neighborhood Watch logo in the flesh?

A very handsome Neighborhood Watch logo.

His eyes are a steely blue and youthful.

There’s no hard, determined stare to them, and he looks like a deer in headlights.

I examine his strong brows and soft nose, full lips and sharp, clean-shaven jaw.

His hat covered a head of thick dirty blond hair and a strand falls across his forehead.

It draws my gaze to an aged, curved scar framing his right eye, exactly where I apply my highlighter each morning.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, lowering his voice. “I promise. I just need to talk to you.”

His voice carries a tone of desperation and warmth I haven’t heard in a long time. He’s not chastising me (yet) or coming at me with snide accusations (yet), so perhaps there’s some merit in listening. But I’ll be smart about it first.

I reach into my purse and grasp my branded pepper spray while I remember what I learned from my collab with a women’s self-defense class.

The instructor was afraid of me because I have incredibly sharp elbows.

I remember that shouting help! will yield no help, because people are self-centered fucks, and to go for the balls when in doubt.

“There’s a link for business inquiries in my bio!” I tell him.

He watches me with deep confusion and mouths what? to himself.

“I’ve been followed around left and right, called every name in the book. You better have something good to say and fast. Or I’ll…”

“Oh god, please don’t pepper spray me. This is as close as I’ll come,” he pleads, and holds his hands out in front of him. “I swear.”

I breathe in the scent of crisp sandalwood, mint, and freshly printed paper, like a sexy human paper cut.

“Who are you and what do you want?”

“Someone who needs to talk to you.”

“You already said that.”

“You recently saw something—”

“How do you know that?” I snap back.

“Everyone knows it. Jesus, you have a million followers. Plenty of people saw your video. Unfortunately.”

Well, fair point there.

“Oh.”

“ Anyway ,” he groans. “You saw something the other night and posted about it on the internet—”

It’s the first time I’ve thought about why someone would be after me.

Visions of flashing lights rush through my head again.

I want to forget what I saw. I want to move on, but there’s a nagging pain in me that needs to know the truth.

And more recently, there’s a nagging pain in me that needs someone to believe me and what I saw.

But this makes sense.

The disappearing videos.

The crashed drone.

The hot investigator someone’s sent after me…

“And I need to talk to you,” he finishes. He has a camera slung over his shoulder, so I’m willing to guess he hopes there’s a story in it for him.

“So does CNN, and People magazine, and TMZ, buddy. I’m not telling you anything .”

Tears bloom behind my eyes and it hits me how tired I am. I hardly slept last night, afraid of the dark for the first time in my life, feeling exposed even in the safety of my own home.

“I’m different—”

“I hear that on every third Raya date. They never are.”

I wrap my fingers around my car door and I’m ready to flee. His big blue eyes are desperate and hungry, and while he might not hurt me, I’m vulnerable and I have no idea what his motives are.

“I want to help you.”

His words strike me right between the ribs, and I’ve heard it time and time again.

From sponsors. From collaborators. From fellow pageant contestants.

They all want to help me, but they want to help me in the ways that benefit them.

There is never anything real in it for me—maybe free AirPods or a free cruise, but no one helps me because they know it’ll make me happy.

And despite the honest look in this man’s eyes, I doubt he’s going to be the one to break the spell.

“No, you don’t,” I snap.

His lips purse together. He rests his hands on his hips and shuffles his feet. Then I notice his shoes. While the rest of him is crisp in a full suit, he’s wearing a pair of black Converse where it seems like he should be wearing boots or dress shoes.

“Ariel.”

His voice drops deeper and sharper than I expect. A shiver runs down my back, but I remain quiet.

“I have a whole file on you. Ariel—El for short—Martin. You’re twenty-eight.

Birthday is July twenty-eighth. Happy belated golden birthday, by the way.

You’re originally from outside Sacramento, but have lived in LA for the past ten years.

You’re a former pageant queen and you have one point four million followers, though that’s dropped significantly in the past day. ”

“You could have googled any of that.”

“You were raised by a single mom. I can tell you where your dad is—”

“I don’t care.”

“Fairview Ave. Milo. Oak Crest Elementary School. Kidz Bop 2 .” He spits these things out, and I don’t know the connection, but they feel oddly familiar.

Street I grew up on.

First pet (an ill-fated hermit crab).

Name of my elementary school.

First album I remember buying.

“Are those my banking security questions? Dude, how the fuck —”

I hope this is all not on the internet already. I worry my phone’s been hacked—god only knows what they’ll find.

“I told you—I have your file. We know everything about you, and it’s how I found you. You also geotagged yourself at the gym, so…”

Goddamn Pamela the Pilates instructor.

“Listen to me.” He steps closer. There’s a rush of late-summer wind and another smell of sharp cologne.

He feels like a malfunctioning human time machine.

The full black suit, the hat, fucking suspenders , all seem like they’re from another time, but things like his Converse, modern speech, and general knowledge of social media ground him well in the current timeline.

I don’t notice how close he’s gotten and I’ve dropped my guard. “I need to know what happened to you.”

I could tell him everything. I’m scared in so many different ways.

Not only do I have to cope with what happened to me, but I also have to live with the fact that no one believes me…

and that this could happen again. Whoever this man is, no matter what he promises, he’s not going to be any different from the rest.

“I’m not telling you anything. Go watch the video yourself and write your smash piece on how crazy I am.” My voice wavers. “I’m sick of giving people things they won’t return.”

His shoulders drop and he holds his hands up in surrender. “Look, I know you’re scared, but it’s my job to get to the bottom of this.”

He carefully opens his jacket and pulls out a leather ID case. He flips it down and shows me the card and silver badge inside, and I freeze.

The logo is the same one I saw on the crashed drone—three stars and three letters. PIS.

Oh…well, I hadn’t been expecting the name of the agency to be piss .

“Piss?” I ask.

“ No . You say the letters. P-I-S.”

“Okay, so you work for piss.” I read the name etched below the logo.

Special Agent Carter Brody

I examine it from a distance, but reach out after a second to feel the raised metal logo in his hand. Special Agent Carter Brody yanks the badge back.

“Hey.”

All I know is I am even less inclined to talk to the government than I am to talk to the press. If they’ve sent someone after me—even if he’s a rookie—I saw something real . Something I’m not supposed to be talking about. I know I should be scared, but right now I’m vindicated.

I saw what I thought was a UFO. Now a man—quite literally in black—is cornering me in a parking lot. The tinfoil hat is manifesting already.

There’s no way anyone’s going to believe that a man in a suit and fedora is following me around. That’s almost more ridiculous than a UFO.

I just have to get the hell out of here and outsmart this fool, even if he is extremely pretty.

I step closer so we’re toe to toe. He’s got plenty of inches on my five-seven frame, safely above six feet, and everything about his presence should be predatory. Yet he doesn’t feel that way one bit. The sharp slant of his jaw tightens, a muscle in his cheek flexing as he chews his gum.

“Show me that badge again. If I’m going to tell you what I saw, I need to know you’re not an impostor.”

I tap an extremely expensive tennis shoe on the dingy parking lot floor. He wavers in place. Then he shows it to me again.

“Neat,” I say. “Can I see the leather? It’s really good quality.”

Flatter this dumbass , I think. Flattery will get pretty boys eating from the palm of your hand.

“You must be very important if they gave you such a nice badge case.”

He huffs. “Yeah, sure.”

But as he does, his grip loosens on the case. This is exactly the moment I’ve been waiting for. I yank it the rest of the way from his hands, and before he can curse or stop me, I toss it full speed into the half-filled dumpster behind him. He pivots with a shocked gasp.

“My badge ,” he hisses. “Why would you do that? You told me you’d talk!”

If only he knew I lied for a living. If only he knew how good at deception I am, even if I’m not proud of it. I bet none of that is in his file on me.

Agent Carter rushes to the dumpster and peers over the edge. He lets out a sad snivel and stands on his toes to scope it out for his badge.

“Wait,” he mutters, turning back around. But by the time he realizes his mistake, I’m already in my car and peeling out, heading far, far away from my government-sanctioned Man in Black.